The Lone Hand (Pain)/Chapter 5

As I have already explained, my adventures with the spiritualists were more interesting than remunerative. I contrasted rather bitterly my light-hearted start upon my career in London and my present condition. It had seemed so simple to forsake the usual futile and ill-paid lines of women's work and to find a new and better way for myself. I had found nothing. It was due more to my luck than my judgment that I was not already at the end of my resources. As it was they were fast dwindling.

Every day I made a point of going out into the stimulating life of crowded London streets. Somewhere in them I felt that I should find my chance. Amid so much that was happening there would be some circumstance that I could use to my profit. I trained myself to observe. Whether it was by day or by night that I had taken my walk I always sat down on my return and reviewed in my mind what I had seen and wondered whether there was anything that I could turn to account.

One morning after breakfast, as I picked up my newspaper, my eye fell on an announcement that a lady had lost a pug-dog, and would pay one guinea for his restoration. It seemed to me queer that I had never thought of this before. Why should I not find things and get rewards? Pug-dogs at a guinea a time did not represent wealth, but there were more serious losses that brought higher rewards. The same paper provided me with an instance. On the evening of the 20th inst., in or near Erciston-square, W., Lady Meskell had lost a pearl necklace. A description of it was appended, and a reward of four hundred pounds was offered.

I knew Erciston-square very well. It had been rather a favourite place with me in my wanderings. I liked to see the arrivals and departures at dinners, dances, and receptions. Sometimes great people were pointed out to me.

“That's the Spanish Ambassador,” I heard one ragged boy say to another. I have not the least conception how he knew, but I am quite certain he was right. That was at No. 14, and it was to No. 14 that the pearl necklace, if found, was to be restored. It struck me that the reward offered was unusually large. I had seen pearl necklaces in shop windows which could be bought for less. Still, undoubtedly their value might mount to almost any figure.

A paragraph in the paper threw a little more light on the subject. Lady Meskell was a fashionable woman, and was always taking stalls at bazaars or acting in amateur theatricals on behalf of different charities She affected to treat her loss lightly. “The necklace was not really very valuable,” she said, “but I prized it for its associations. It was given me by my husband. On Wednesday night I was walking in the garden of the square, as I often do on fine summer evening. I believe,” she added, “that I am the only resident who makes any use of the garden at all, except perhaps a few children in the afternoon. My necklace must have dropped either in the garden or the street. As soon as I discovered my loss I had the garden—which of course is not accessible to the public—thoroughly searched from end to end, and nothing was found. I'm afraid it must have dropped in the street, where, of course, it would have been snapped up at once.” She had communicated with the police and was quite hopeful that the necklace would be recovered. “You see,” she added, “I am offering a reward which is really more than a thief would be able to get for it.”

There were one or two points about her statements which seemed to be rather curious. I turned up a very rough and abbreviated diary that I was in the habit of keeping, and found, as I had expected, that on the evening of Wednesday, the 20th, I had walked through Erciston-square. The time must have been between six and seven. I lay back in my chair and closed my eyes and conjured up a picture of Erciston-square garden as seen by the public from outside. It was much like any other of the square gardens. Masses of sooty evergreens gave it a decent privacy. Geraniums and blue lobelias struggled for life in a prim bed that skirted a formal and shaven lawn. There were a few big plane-trees, and in the middle of the garden there was a kind of summer-house or shelter. What had I seen in Erciston-square on Wednesday evening which would throw any light on the matter? I had seen something; I had seen somebody leave the garden, and that somebody was most certainly not Lady Meskell. A faint idea came to me—it was hardly a theory as yet.

I went to the public reading-roam next day and looked over those papers which purvey fashionable intelligence and personal paragraphs, and as Lady Meskell had been brought into the public eye by the loss of her pearls, I found a good deal about her. Her present age was not given, but she was spoken of as being young. And there were the usual rhapsodies about her beauty. She was of mixed parentage, her mother having been Spanish and her father English. She had inherited fortunes from both her father and her husband. The latter had been dead about three years, and she had not re-married. She had one daughter, a girl of nine. She was generous, particularly to her favourite charities, and her dramatic abilities were spoken of in terms that the Press does not often spoke for amateurs. Well, there was nothing here to contradict the idea that I had already formed. Indeed, there was one detail that confirmed it.

For a week I hesitated. Every day I saw in the paper Lady Meskell's announcement of the reward of four hundred pounds. I wanted those four hundred pounds rather badly. Suppose I called at No. 14. Erciston-square? If my guess was wrong, as it might very easily be, I should make Lady Meskell exceedingly angry. Need that concern me very much? If I were right, then the possibilities were great.

That afternoon I bought a new hat, which suited me. That always gave me courage. And I took a hansom. Nothing keeps one's nerves steadier and raises one's self-respect more than a little extravagance, and I could not afford either the hat or the hansom. I drove to No. 14, and demanded, in a clear and unfaltering voice, if I could see Lady Meskell.

“Her ladyship is not at home,” said the butler. And I own that it was some relief to me to hear it.

“Will you tell her ladyship,” I said, as I handed him my card, “that I called with reference to her pearl necklace?”

The man hesitated. “It is just possible that I may be mistaken,” he said. “If you will wait for one minute, I will enquire.”

He showed me into a big, over-furnished and over-decorated drawing-room. As I was looking at rather a nice copy of a well-known Rubens, the door opened and Lady Meskell came towards me.

Lady Meskell was anywhere between thirty-five and forty-five. She wife still distinctly beautiful. Her eyes and hair were very dark. Her complexion was perhaps a little too pale, but I liked it. Rouge would not have suited her. Her general appearance seemed to suggest a curious association of poetry and commonness. The commonness was not in her dress, which was very quiet, very expensive, and in the fashion of the day after to-morrow. I think it lay in her mouth (she had a brute of a mouth) and in her rather podgy white hands. Her smile of welcome showed perfect teeth—perhaps was intended to show them. The fat fingers of one hand twisted up my card.

“This is very good of you, Miss Castel,” she said at once. “Do sit down and tell me all about it. And first of all, have you got my pearls?”

“No, Lady Meskell,” I said. “I have not got them.”

Her expression did not change at this. She still listened with an air of polite attention.

“But,” I continued, “I have thought over the case and I have formed a theory. If the theory is correct I can tell you where your pearls are.”

“How interesting! The police, you know, haw been no good at all. I shall be so glad to have some fresh light on the subject, even if it does not actually lead to anything.”

I felt convinced that she did not expect me to be able to tell her anything at all, and that, as a kind-hearted woman, she meant to let me babble for a few minutes and then get rid of me.

“On the other hand,” I said, “if my theory should happen to be wrong you will be exceedingly angry with me.”

Lady Meskell laughed. “Oh, I hope not,” the said. “I am very seldom angry, but when I am, I become rather awful.”

“The Spanish are privileged to have passions,” I said, “and you, I think, are partly Spanish. You begin to frighten me.”

Again she laughed. “You needn't be afraid, really. How did you know I was partly Spanish? Oh, yes, it was in the papers, of course. Whatever your theory is, I want to hear it. And I will take all the responsibility of making you tell me it.”

That's very kind of you. Your pearl necklace was not lost at all. It was stolen by a man of about forty. He was wearing a dark suit, a dark-blue overcoat with a velvet collar, and a hard felt hat. He left the Square Garden at five-and-twenty minutes to seven by the gate on the other side of the square. He was a foreigner, and is almost certainly employed in some menial capacity. I cannot tell you his name, but I have no doubt that further information could be obtained at the Spanish Embassy. Although I have brought you here the information which may enable you to recover your necklace, it is information that you had in your possession all along. You know more even than I do, for you know the name of this man.”

“This is really very interesting,” said Lady Meskell. “You saw this man leave the garden, I suppose?”

“I did.”

“And you have remembered it all this time?”

“I have trained myself to remember.”

“You are right in your description of his appearance. He is a foreigner, and he is—or was—a servant. What made you suggest that anything could be heard of him at the Spanish Embassy?”

“Your mother was Spanish. The Spanish Ambassador attends your receptions. His carriage was pointed out to me.”

“A mistake,” said Lady Meskell bluntly. “He has never been here, and I know no Spaniards. Deduction is a dangerous game, and it seems to me that you've been playing it rather freely. You deduced, for instance, that what you said would make me extremely angry. Now, nothing that you have said could possibly make anybody angry. Not even your suggestion of complicity. But I can quite imagine that something which you thought might annoy a woman in my position extremely. Now tell me what you thought.”

“I have made a mistake. I am sorry to have troubled you, and I will go now, please.”

“Please, don't. You won't tell me?”

I shook my head.

“Then I will tell you,” said Lady Meskell. “I will take a hand at this game of deduction and see if I can play it any better than you do. You knew that my mother was a Spaniard, and you supposed, quite wrongly, that I had some connexion with the Spanish Embassy. Why should a woman in my position meet a man in his position secretly, and in the Square Garden? How could he get into the Square Garden unless I lent him a key? There must be a romance here. Romance fits well with the Spanish blood, doesn't it? Briefly, you scented a love affair. The man had robbed me, and I wanted to get my pearls back. But I did not want the world to hear that story about me.” She looked a malicious devil as she was saying all this. “You are quite right,” she continued. “I do not want the world to hear any such story. Two hundred and fifty pounds would not be too much to pay for your silence.” She took a step or two towards the writing-table. “Shall I write you a cheque?” she said.

By this time I had become rather angry myself. “I don't know,” I said, “whether you mean to admit in this way that I had thought correctly; but if you suggest that I had come here to blackmail you, or that you can offer me money in that way”

Here Lady Meskell, somewhat to my surprise, burst into peals of laughter. She sat down and rubbed her fat hands together cheerfully. “You are a very good girl,” she said. “I thought you were from the first. But I was just making sure. No; unromantic though it may seem, there is no liaison between myself and the man—he happens to be a cook—whom you saw leaving the garden. But amid your mistakes you made one or two very happy guesses. It is true that he took my pearls, and that I knew all along he had taken than, and that I knew his name. The advertisement will keep on appearing for the rest of this week. I have my own reasons for that. But as a matter of fact the pearls were returned to me the day before yesterday. I have got them upstairs, and I will show them to you, if you like, before you go.”

“They were returned to you by this cook-man?”

“Oh dear, no! That wouldn't have done at all. I can't compound a felony. At any rate, if I do there must be no evidence of it. My friend the cook quite understood that. A nice, ruddy-faced cabman brought the pearls back, and described how his little girl had found them in the gutter, and had supposed them to be beads, and had worn them ever since. He knew it was a lie, and I knew it was a lie, and he knew that I knew. But we went through it all with perfect solemnity. My expert went over the pearls to see that they were all right, and the bank-notes were handed to the cabman. But I think that, as you've been so clever—a little too clever, perhaps—you ought not to be left in the dark as to the rest of the story. I did not want to prosecute, because I did not want to have everybody laughing at me, and they would certainly have laughed. Tell me, did you find out nothing else about me?”

“Two or three other things. You were connected in different ways with several charities. Then, again, you”

“That'll do. It began with the charities. I came across this good gentleman in hospital. He is an Italian; he has a bright and sunny imagination, and he told me strange stories of streets at the back of Tottenham Court-yard. After I demanding a pledge of secrecy he confessed himself to be an Anarchist.”

“That wasn't romantic, after all?”

“Oh, no; it wasn't. I am sometime inclined in think that nothing ever is. But I thought it was romantic. I was as bad in that respect as you are. He had something in his mind which he wished to tell me. He was to leave the hospital next day. I could not go to see him nor would it be safe him to call at my house. I had servants who knew him. He gave me the name of one of them, and quite correctly too. I have no idea how he got hold of it. Would I give him a meeting one evening in the Square Garden? What he had to tell me was a matter of life and death. It was a matter, in fact, that concerned the life of the greatest in the land. It was most urgent and most serious. If it were found out that he had betrayed the plot his own life would be forfeited. I told him that luckily I was in the habit of walking in the Square Garden on fine summer evenings. I am inclined to think that he knew this already. I would go to the summer-house in the middle of the garden, and half an hour later he might join me there, coming in from the other side of the square. Well, he came.”

“Wasn't it very rash of you?”

“Very likely. I may be a lot of other things but I am not a coward. I carried a useful weapon—it was not a dagger or revolver, but merely a police whistle. I was not in the least afraid of him. He kept it up splendidly to the very end. He told me a long and beautiful story, illustrated by plans of Buckingham Palace. The plans looked quite all right, but no woman can understand plans, and my knowledge of the interior of Buckingham Palace is very limited. He accepted ten sovereigns, under protest, to enable him to get out of the country. As I left the summer-house he helped me on with my cloak. That was his opportunity. I did not discover the loss until I got back to my own house. Even then, when I felt certain that he had stolen my necklace, I could not quite bring myself to disbelieve his story. It was so circumstantial, so full of details, so correct in every point in which I was able to check it. I drove at once to Scotland Yard, and it was not till I was actually there that I made up mv mind to say nothing about my Italian friend and his story, I dreaded the courteous smile of an inspector who could put his hand at any time on any Anarchist in London. I merely notified them that I had lost the pearl necklace and gave a description of it. I wished to recover it and to let my cook friend go scot free—not on his own account, but because I could not bear that my friends should know what an idiot I had made of myself.”

“And what about that servant who knew the Italian? “

“Simplicity itself. He did not know the Italian, nor did the Italian know him. The Italian merely knew that I employed a man of that name. Naturally, one of the first things I did was to satisfy myself on that point. Really, do you know, when I remember how my advertisement was worded, it seems to me that you have earned the reward. Won't you let me write that cheque? “

“Thanks, very much,” I said, “but I'm afraid I don't feel as if I've earned it myself. And so I can't take it. I am sorry to have wasted your time with my mistakes.” I held out my hand to say good-bye.

She glanced at the clock nervously. “But you mustn't go yet—not until you have seen the pearls.” She rang and had the necklace brought to her. It was just an ordinary necklace, and I could not imagine why she had bothered about it. I admired it, and again said good-bye.

“But you must stay and have some tea with me. I am quite alone, and it would be so kind of you. I want you to tell me all about this marvellous memory of yours. I would give anything if I could cultivate it in myself.” Once more she glanced at the clock.

It was quite obvious, for some reason which I could not discover, that she was trying to keep me. I was determined to go. She implored me to wait at any rate until her carriage could be brought round to drive me back. She could not bear to think of the amount of trouble I had taken for her, an entire stranger to me. I might at least let her carriage take me home. But I immediately determined to walk. She still tried one or two frantic excuses for keeping me, but I was firm, and a minute or two later I was outside in the square. I walked round to the other side of it. and there, in the Square Garden, pacing up and down, was a man of about forty, of a foreign appearance, wearing a dark suit, a dark blue overcoat with a velvet collar, and a hard felt hat.

And then I knew what a remarkably clever woman, and at the same time what an absolute fool, Lady Meskell was.

I was one of the few people in London who were not surprised some few weeks later when her marriage with an Italian cook made paragraphs in the papers. She had met him, it was said, in a hospital where she was visiting, and the two had fallen violently in love with one another.

As for the necklace, I have not the least doubt that it was really dropped in the street and really found by the cabman's child, and that the fortunate chef had nothing whatever to do with it. It is very wrong, of course, but I own that when I thought of the rapidity, the brilliance, and the convincing character of Lady Meskell's lies to me, I had some feeling of envy. It was only the chance that I decided to go at the time when he was waiting for her in the Square Garden that gave her away to me. I could not have done as well for myself in so tight a place.